Bearing Witness

W. Boca Teacher Visits Israel

Kathy Aprea-Cook, a teacher at St. Jude Catholic School in West Boca Raton, said she felt "closer to God" when she visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem recently.

"It just felt like there was an energy of hope coming from that wall, of peace, too," she said. "There was an awesomeness there. I just felt closer to God."

Kamia Goldstein, who teaches English literature at Archbishop McCarthy High School in Southwest Ranches, was moved to commit to teaching tolerance and the Holocaust.

The two joined 17 other teachers from Catholic schools in 10 states on the Anti-Defamation League's annual Bearing Witness Advanced summer program.

Three days of seminars on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism precede the trip to Israel. They help teachers better understand the role the Catholic Church has played in anti-Semitism and the church's role in Catholic-Jewish relations, said Ed Alster, the ADL's education director.

Soon after their arrival in Israel, the teachers talked to Jews, Christians and Muslims. The ADL "wanted to make sure we did not walk away and say we saw one side of the story," Aprea-Cook said.

They visited sites of historic and religious significance to Christians and Jews and prayed at several Christian sites.

"At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre [in Jerusalem], I was hoping not to cry because I was so overwhelmed," Aprea-Cook said. But she and others did cry.

"As a social studies teacher, for me it's really history," Aprea-Cook said. "It's the basis of what our original religion was. You learn that without the foundation of the Jewish faith, we are nothing."

"I felt like I had a unique experience because I have family both Catholic and Jewish," Goldstein said. "I felt proud to be Catholic and proud to be of Jewish descent, too."

Both said what they saw and learned would influence their teaching.

"The hard part," said Aprea-Cook, "is teaching kids, especially in middle school, about anti-Semitism and having them go home and hope their parents see things the way I do."

Goldstein said her students read Night, Elie Wiesel's memoir of the Holocaust, and she teaches them about the Jewish faith, about Jewish culture before World War II, the history of anti-Semitism and about Nazi propaganda.

Goldstein said a lot of her students have experienced discrimination.

"We talk about tolerance and that makes [the Holocaust] more relevant to them," she said.

For Aprea-Cook, the trip to Israel was "the journey I was meant to go on all my life. If I had my family there, I would have stayed there."